Are we so different from God?

Cycle B
14th Sunday

In the first reading, God called the Israelites rebels. But in the end, He blessed them saying, "There is a prophet among them."

God's approach of solving things is really so different than ours. Imagine, the normal reaction would be to take revenge, to retaliate. After all, God is God. But He showed His true nature as a loving God, a merciful God, who would do everything to lift us up.

In the gospel, Jesus was totally mangled by his townmates, ridiculing him in every way. But Jesus was not concerned with that. Rather, he was totally amazed at their lack of faith. How could a people loved by God be so uncaring? What an irony from the first reading.

How could we have turned away from Him who loved us? What happened to us? What did we exchange him for? Are we reaping the fruits of our denial of God? What could we do to bring us back to Him? Perhaps the second reading will give us a clue. The clue is - we have been given a thorn in the flesh. This is the effect of sin in our lives. Like a scar, we are condemned to live with struggling to remove all these. But as Jesus said, "My grace is enough for you," it gives us a reason to continue fighting till we see that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us.

May this give us inspiration to go back, to start from the very beginning - that it is God who is the source of who we are.

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